Tag Archives: Holocaust

In its “Harmonic Convergence” concerts this week, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra presents four compositions spanning the second half of the 20th century. Cellist Johannes Moser joins the orchestra for Shostakovich’s “Cello Concerto No. 1” and actor George Takei reads the textual component of Schoenberg’s “A Survivor from Warsaw.”

The Men of the Nashville Symphony Chorus perform with Takei in “A Survivor from Warsaw,” which was written in 1947 by Viennese-born composer Arnold Schoenberg. It tells of people singing a prayer song in defiance of the guards brutally rounding them up for transport to a death camp during the Holocaust.

“That Schoenberg piece is a powerful piece and a moving piece,” Takei said.

He first performed it last fall in St. Louis with the Arkansas Symphony.

The invitation came as a result of Takei’s connection with Arkansas, where he spent part of his childhood in an internment camp for Japanese-American citizens during World War II.

Takei spoke by phone from New York City, his resonant voice giving a preview of his upcoming Nashville appearances. He’s in New York working to bring “Allegiance,” a musical exploring the consequences of the internment policy, to Broadway.

Below are excerpts from a conversation about that and how the legacy of those internment camps informs his approach to the Schoenberg piece.

You were between the ages of five and eight when you were interned, do you have specific memories of the camp?

I remember the barbed wire fence that confined me and I remember the tall sentry tower with machine guns pointed at us. I remember the searchlight that followed me when I made the night runs to the latrines from our barracks. These are very real memories, but to put it in context, I thought it was kind of nice that they lit the way for me…I was too young to understand.

What do you draw on for the Schoenberg narration, then?

Photo by Alex Berliner

Long conversations with my father when I was a teenager. Sometimes those conversations got very heated because I was an idealistic teenager reading civics books and American history books with all the shining ideals of our democracy. I couldn’t quite reconcile that with what I knew to be my childhood. For my father, it was a whole different story, he was a man who suffered and struggled through those horrible years. He used to say: ‘They took my business, they took our home, they took our freedom. The one thing I didn’t give him was my dignity.’

When did you become involved with the musical “Allegiance?”

From the beginning. We had the world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego…Now we’re transferring to Broadway this fall.

I was fortunate enough to come across this wonderfully gifted composer/lyricist Jay Kuo. We hope that this becomes a movie as well and more people will see it, but you know Broadway is the biggest and most important stage in America and that’s been our goal from the time that we started developing this musical.

How often do you perform these pieces with symphony orchestras?

I do one every few months. The other symphony I do is the “Lincoln Portrait” by Copland. There’s another symphony I do a lot of, it’s sci-fi themed and of course that’s because of my association — that will be with me throughout my life, I’m sure — with “Star Trek.” [Takei portrayed Hikaru Sulu in the original series and in six feature films.]

Isn’t it funny that we got this far into the interview without mentioning that?